Gaiaonline Off The Chain

VPL Member

I don't think I've ever seen anything posted about GO on this website.
I loved the site for it's features and community. Recently the site got a new CEO, and since then the lies have been pouring out.
The condition of the site right now makes Viacom buying Neopets looks like a kid buying candy in a store.

Here's a quick overview of the problem I am having:
-Items are being rereleased in recolors at a high price, ex $10 original and $30 for a recolor.
-'Flash sales' Popular items being sold for a limited time pricing $10 to $500!!!
-Millions, billions, gazillions of gold being released into the site from a game you play called Smashblox.
-The rereleasing of an item, Flynns Booty, constantly. Once opened you can get the possibility of 100 million gold if you buy a single (don't know the price, I think it's $2.50) or 250 gold if you get the chest ($10 I think???).
-Starting to sell older monthly collectibles from the past in their cash shop!! I don't know the exact price but I'm guessing around $50-$100?

I stopped playing 2 months ago. I'm going to go look on the forums now and see whats up. Anyone else play? What do you think of this?

VPL Member

This is quite interesting. As someone who used to play zOMG there, I have seen handfuls of poor decisions made by the staff at GaiaOnline. For those of you that don't know, zOMG is Gaia's MMO. You can walk around using your Gaia avatar. There has only been one (story-line) area added since its release in 2008. Most people just play the game for gold or wander around aimlessly due to the lack of content. Backstory over, here's one example of their bad decisions: During one Summer there was a glitch in one of the areas. It produced rings (the weapons) at level 20.0 when the max was supposed to be 10.0. People played in that area to "collect" these overpowered rings (you can't sell them or really benefit from them in any way). When the devs found out, one talked about how people were abusing the game. They gave a ring called "Abuse" to anyone with an overpowered ring and a ring called "Integrity" to anyone who didn't have one. The Integrity one gives stat boosts while the Abuse one make you weaker when equipped. Basically, it was a slap in the face to people who actually played the game and dealt with its lack of new content and constant lag. And new players had no way of getting the Integrity ring (some people never got one due to glitches). It was just a really, really stupid decision to go about punishing people that way.
All the while they're making poor decisions like this, no content is being added, the game is dying, and they're begging people to spend money on items to keep zOMG alive. What a joke. /rant over

As far as GaiaOnline being greedy and making other bad decisions while trying to get into people's wallets, I've got more examples of that.
-The introduction of Booty Grab. It added way too much gold to the economy. It was the first game that could give you so much. Before it would take me a week of grinding to make 5k (this is in 2008), and Booty Grab allows you to make 1k+ in a minute. It's because the fish that are used in the game are bought in the cash shop. It was something like $50 to fill a tank. I think they didn't care what the game was doing to the economy, because Gaia staff were blinded by the money as usual.
-RIGs and REIs. Two types of items that can be bought in the cash shop. With these Gaia gave up quality for more cash. RIGs (Rare Item Generators) are something like $9.99 and give you a certain amount of chances to get a rare item. Some items are purposely made extremely rare and only available this way (or from purchasing from a user). REIs (Rapid Evolving Items) replaced Evolving Items. Evolving Items would take a longer time to evolve (which means for all the poses [wearables] to show up for you to use). REIs have less poses and less quality. But they can release more of them and thus make more money, so EIs became a thing of the past.
-Re-releases and recolors. I know some of the recolors are asked for so Gaia can't be entirely faulted for that. But they do have a habit of doing recolors of more expensive items and releasing them in the cash shop or in RIGs. My favorite re-release so far was of the Angelic Halo. Now this was one of the items from 2003 (Gaia's opening year). They re-released it at a random time for Gaia's 10th anniversary they say. It was available in the cash shop for a few hours for $1,000. Yes, people bought it. This item was worth some billions before. I think it dropped to half a billion, but I haven't checked lately.

GaiaOnline staff have a history of abandoning their games, not keeping their word, acting unprofessionally, lying to users, "letting go" staff members, and selling out. I would not recommend it to anyone.

Let me leave one more example to this glorious novel of mine. For Gaia's 10th anniversary, they wanted to beat the record of users online. One of the staff members told people to log into multiple accounts, basically do whatever it took. They were trying to look like they had a bigger userbase. The whole site is dishonest.

Approved VPL ArtistVPL Member

Wowsers, I use to spend over waking moment of my life on GO, I started my "Art and Graphics" there, as well as profile making and coding. I left.. maybe 6 months after booty grab came out (Maybe longer) but to think, I would be PISSED to see one of the first MCs for sale in the cash shop (Because I have 2 on my account)

Retired VPL StaffVPL Member

I go on Gaia on and off for the B/C forums, but the economy and actual site has gone to hell. I personally feel like it all just slid downhill after the introduction to Gaia Cash, but the stuff they're doing now is absolutely and 100% ridiculous.

I donated 5 dollars a month or so ago and got like 25 FREE flynn's bootys. FIVE DOLLARS. And I got like 5 million gold. Broken maybe??

Edit: I lost all my faith when I saw they resold an angelic halo for a thousand dollars.

Approved VPL ArtistVPL Member

I go on Gaia on and off for the B/C forums, but the economy and actual site has gone to hell. I personally feel like it all just slid downhill after the introduction to Gaia Cash, but the stuff they're doing now is absolutely and 100% ridiculous.

I donated 5 dollars a month or so ago and got like 25 FREE flynn's bootys. FIVE DOLLARS. And I got like 5 million gold. Broken maybe??

Edit: I lost all my faith when I saw they resold an angelic halo for a thousand dollars.

Click to expand...

What are you KIDDING me? Someone spent $1,000 on a freaking pixel item

The GCD is going crazy.
And there's a sticky for a Halloween gold sink? Is this a joke? 10 million gold for a poster and other prizes. Are they seriously trying to save the economy now? They have been talking about helping it for YEARS. They just screwed it up royally. Definitely no going back now.

Red Devil MiniWings in La Victoire (super rare item - went for 800m?). It's being sold now for $150. The sad part is people are posting about how they're thinking of buying it. Why when the site is so screwed up?

Approved VPL ArtistVPL Member

I have an account in Gaia too. As soon as I saw it though, I knew it was definitely not of my taste and I couldnt really see it progressing from that point. Ofcourse, its a large site and all that already, but every site should progress. But in the end, I gave Gaia my usual trial span - 1 week. It was during the Easter event time I believe and we were supposed to collect eggs or soemthing. I looked around Gaia and it definitely did NOT catch my interest. I cant play Flash Games and MMOs in my desktop due to lag problems and the site was so very messily arranged and the forum itself was a mess. The event was annoying at some point and I got confused. I dropped it right after that one week. Ive been playing many sites and I`ve also encountered a lot of bad mouthing about Gaia and how Gaia would ban people or something. I dont really know.

tldr; I tried it, I didnt like it. Too messy and jumbled. Too busy.

and I personally dont really like REALLY large communities cause they tend to get out of hand and the few admins/mods can never really control anything.

Administrator

When did the new CEO takeover Gaia Online? It's ridiculous when items are re-entered in the game after being retired and all that. I hate when sites do that. The new owner is obviously trying to make money faster by cutting down the prices of certain items without knowing the true of the items.

VPL Member

@cpvr I'm not sure. I witnessed not to long ago that members were getting in trouble for saying harsh things about the CEO. After that incident I saw someone who I am acquaintance with asked for some info on him and his post got deleted. So I probably can't ask without getting in trouble. :/

VPL Member

'G'afternoon, Gaians! The contents of today's sales should come as no surprise to you... considering that I've often been called a little angel. For the next 24 hours only, we're selling celestial goods like Mini Angel Wings, Angelic Sash, and Angelic Manner!'

Isn't the mini angel wings and sash from a monthly collectible or am I mistaken?
I asked and they were priced at $99 and $35

OMG! I looked at my last 10 announcements and their all cash shop related, and they re-released flynns booty!
I'm not even going to look through the probably 50 missed announcements. I'm sure most are cash shop related.

I also here their going to make a 18+ site, or section of the site.

When this first started happening there was a lot of rage in the GCD (community discussion). Now I don't see any. Has everyone accepted this?

Approved WriterApproved VPL ArtistVPL Member

I quit this game a long time ago when they started flooding the cash shop with things. I traded my account to a friend for $70 and gave him everything he wanted except my Golden Laurels, which was my very first quest item and the first item I ever really wanted on the website. Those were given to my brother. I joined the site when they were worth 80k gold, bought them when they were worth 500k with minimal inflation, and now they have been inflated to 27 million gold.

Twenty seven million.
This game has become a cash crop for a businessperson's wallet and a joke for the beloved players. What a shame.

VPL SupporterApproved VPL ArtistVPL Member

Honestly like On disk DLC, Kingdom Sky and Cris Brown they get away with it because there are people are willing to support them even when they are clearly giving them less or doing wrong.

Here is the thing people give these people money. So no matter how bad things get and how much we complain nothing will change. People are not willing to give alternatives a chance. Switching to another site is well and dandy but if other people do not switch too your going to end up back on the site anyway.

This is my issue with DA. I clearly hate their tactics but if no one else makes the move too I really have no choice but to deal with their crap. The staff know this and pretty much abuse the fuck out of it just barely hitting the limit.

GO will keep doing it because there are fools who will just roll with it.

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Approved VPL ArtistVPL Member

They re-released it at a random time for Gaia's 10th anniversary they say. It was available in the cash shop for a few hours for $1,000. Yes, people bought it. This item was worth some billions before. I think it dropped to half a billion, but I haven't checked lately.

VPL Member

Isn't the mini angel wings and sash from a monthly collectible or am I mistaken?
I asked and they were priced at $99 and $35

Click to expand...

I believe the sash is from an old monthly collectible. I think the angel wings are just a rare item like the mini devil wings.

@Corzeir You're right. The problem is that people keep supporting the site. Some people have posted that they won't be buying GC (Gaia Cash) anymore. But for a lot of people, I think this has allowed them the opportunity to become rich on Gaia and get the items they've wanted for years. So they end up spending money on the site.

Approved VPL ArtistVPL Member

I believe the sash is from an old monthly collectible. I think the angel wings are just a rare item like the mini devil wings.

@Corzeir You're right. The problem is that people keep supporting the site. Some people have posted that they won't be buying GC (Gaia Cash) anymore. But for a lot of people, I think this has allowed them the opportunity to become rich on Gaia and get the items they've wanted for years. So they end up spending money on the site.

I regret ever EVER spending money on that forsaken website now, even if it was around the time that EIs came out

What is ridiculous is that not only the items that you get are expensive, but it's more so gambling if you're trying for one of those chance items
you're basically paying $20.00 (last I remember) for either shit that you can easily earn in 10-15 minutes of booty grab or something valuable. And then it becomes worthless if the price of said item drops to earnable amounts in the marketplace.

I've spent a total of $60.00, once when the EIs were first released, again around my birthday, and again about two years ago.

VPL SupporterPet Game OwnerApproved VPL ArtistVPL Member

Wow I have not played Gaia in a long time, I used to play it a lot, it honestly does sound like they are going to pieces now. It's not bad re releasing items but you have to do it tactfully and if you are going to change dynamics of a company you need to do it slowly to ease people into that change. As said in another thread earlier, this market does NOT LIKE CHANGE

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